It wasn’t until movement sounded somewhere adjacent, the clear shuffle for a hammer or a screw in a toolbox clinking, did the despaired intensity of his aureate gaze lessen on the Nickel Chain door lock he was installing and soften on Sierra’s profile instead. It was then he realized that neither of them had spoken for some time now, the man of few words made of even fewer lately; his features a brood and her letting them, and somewhere in him, he couldn’t be more grateful for that law enforcement saying, once your partner, always your partner. The male’s long lashes blinked, and he let the Phillips screw dangling between full lips fall from his mouth to his open palm, the crouch his broad size had taken to save a bend shifting to face her, “Hey... Si?” He exhaled her name softly, a slow shake tagged at the end surely remnants from the reverie he was just in, “Thank you, again, for wanting to help me with Ophelia’s locks–– I mean it, Si, I do,” And he did; his expression a melt, sincere and adoring in every facet, but the swallow and shake following was more so his hubris speaking than anything, “But--... I’m alright here, on my own. I am. Just don’t feel forced, you know, to stay or anything,” Ivories combed the flesh of his bottom lip as his gaze searched her, releasing it with a low breath and a swallow, “I’m good.”
